Planning for Christmas starts early for the Prince George Humane Society.
It’s the one time of year when staff at the animal shelter get time away from work with their families and also a time to tackle deep cleaning, painting and renovation projects at their downtown headquarters just off First Avenue.
But to make that possible they need to find people willing to provide foster homes for all those pets.
Ever since the shelter opened in 2015, Prince George people have stepped up to fulfill that need. And when they do apply to foster animals over the Christmas season, more often than not they end up providing those critters permanent homes.
“We find most of those animals that end up going to homes for the holidays usually don’t get returned in January,” said PG Humane Society executive director Angela McLaren.
“I think people connect with animals during Christmas. Most of the family members are at home and based on that they just become part of the family and get adopted. So we get to start the new year with fresh set of animals.”
Information on how to foster or adopt animals is on the society’s website.
There seems to be no shortage of surrendered cats and dogs needing homes in Prince George and the number of rescues at the Humane Society have almost doubled from last year. Already this year the shelter, which has space for 30 cats but no dogs, has taken in 800 animals. Surrendered dogs go directly to people’s homes.
“We see a lot of kittens that we have to bottle-feed or we see a lot of pregnant moms and we also get a lot of medical cases, animals recovering from surgeries that need to be fostered and are ready for adoption,” said McLaren.
If the Humane Society is unable to find adoptive homes, they transfer the animals to other rescue groups in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island.
Some of the pets they handle have behaviour issues such as separation anxiety or litter-box training. The society has two animal care coordinators – Jamie Walsh and Kelsey MacWestaway -- who have started a new program called Keeping Pets and People Together, in which they visit foster homes to correct those undesirable behaviours. Of the people who accessed that program, McLaren says there’s been an 85 per cent success rate.
With veterinary clinics all over the city working at or beyond capacity, the wait list is long for appointments, even for the humane society. There’s a backlog of dogs and cats in need of spaying and neutering services which started to pile up during the pandemic and McLaren estimates 700 animals are waiting for that surgery.
“We find that due to the veterinary crisis a lot of people can’t get care, so we find a lot more litters of kittens and puppies coming into the shelter from people just don’t have access to care,” she said. “There are not enough veterinarians and there is no emergency veterinary care from 10 p.m. – 8 a.m., and because veterinarians aren’t taking on new patients people aren’t able to get their pets spayed or neutered.”
The society is fully dependent on private donations to cover its operating cost and McLaren said that source of money has dropped considerably compared to pre-pandemic times.
“We’re seeing historically the lowest donations we’ve ever seen over this period of time, which really talks to the fact the economy crisis is really affecting people’s ability to donate and adopt,” she said. “It’s a spiraling effect and I think we’re all feeling it hard.”
